“personal”

It may only be that my grandfather’s agony has me seeing everything with long-now eyes but these days I’m increasingly aware that I should take precautions in case I die.

I don’t want to die. I don’t shake my head and look away at death, I stand up in defiance. But the fact is our lives are still too fragile and faced with the possibility I would rather think things through.

Which is why I’ve written this short will. I shall edit and refine it as long as I’m living (with the latest version the official one, of course) and so I thought I should start now.

That weird phone call I got weeks ago was from the prim (but ambitious) lil’ supermarket near my house (they got my number from my blog, go figure). Out of the blue they demanded, not rudely but not friendly either, my “cooperation” in taking down pictures of them I had uploaded to Flickr (for I wanted to write a review of how innovative and important the store really is—“The income level of a country is determined, above all, by the productivity of its largest industries. High productivity in the unglamorous “old-economy” sectors—retailing, wholesaling, construction—is most important, since more people work in them.”). Anyway, it sure looked like a big boatload of crap to me then. They weren’t giving me even hints of good reasons and still they threatened me—me, their most ardent former enthusiast—that they didn’t want to pursue the matter in a different way (wtf?). I instinctively groped for the freedom-speech martyr role, willing to fight the crusade against dimwitted, Pleistocene shopkeepers to its bitter end.

And so it would have likely been. But then father and Dragonball intervened^ELZR. “If you do something that you later find upsets a friend, what you do is stop,” was father’s simple but crushing argument. Dragonball’s was more subtle in its nonverbalness but you could word it into this feel-good motto: “enemies are future friends waiting to be made.” I’ve never kept enemies and so it simply kills me to have one. I can’t. Because even if they never actively hurt me, I’ve always been aware that there will come a time when their help would come in handy—and I need all the help I can muster. In the case of this shoppe, I saw them immediately as customers. If this harebrained scheme I hatch of creating an ad-based online interface to Guadalajara is ever going to take off, I will need the help and patronage of every local business I can find.

It took me weeks to visit them (see previous fear post) but when I did, yesterday, it couldn’t have gone better. I went there and defused the whole thing by admitting error from the very beginning and promising to take down the pictures as soon as I came back home (which I’ve done). What followed was two persons trying to outapologize each other. My caller revealed himself a friendly, good-natured man. Most importantly, I finally got to understand what got them so upset. To begin with, being somewhat new to the retail business they’re paranoid about security after lots of bad experiences and it totally unnerved them when this random guy was able to sneak behind guards (some of them undercover) and take pictures nonchalantly. The crux of the matter, though, was that it turns out my Flickr page was the first Google hit for the store (that happens a lot whenever I talk about something from Mexico, Google gives me a totally disproportionate pride of place—Imagery’s aftermath, I suppose) and that, combined with the anxiety of having problems with their webdevelopers (who haven’t been able to upload anything—not even a lousy banner—in six months), got them all worked up—how can it be that some random stranger is the one that tells the world what we are?

Now I offered myself up for the job and I may be the one building their web presence, which I’m sure would be a fascinating job. Amazing isn’t it?

It has taken me some three years to realize it but when I did it was obvious. The crazy sleep schedule I’ve been riding since I dropped out of college is more than the pale-hacker tropism for long quiet nights. It’s more than manic-depression, which for a time I was sure of having. It’s more than youthful immaturity, which I’m sure of having.

I remember the first nights out from college, and some before, I would curl up on my bed, scared as I’ve ever been—fingers curled, fetal, with hamsters in my head and a stomach full of nothing, churning away anyway. Scared of what you say? Oh, the usual I guess, scared of failure, of success, of not being up to the challenge, of blowing it all away in search of some silly dream. Mostly, though, scared of this fear I knew not inside of me.

Those nights stopped without my realizing but I now know what happened to them: I tired them away. I would work (or idle) my way to exhaustion, till there was nothing left for me to do but tumble down. Sleeping was sure easier than facing my fears, and since everything could wait, what was the harm of sleeping on it? Again and again.

I’m happy and I’m grateful (and I’m sushied) at my 22.

My gift to you this year is an idea. A great one. Look around and you’ll find it.

...with a 65 by 20 meters (213 by 65 feet) lot in the ”primer cuadro”—the very heart of downtown, the area around main square—of a small, hundred-thousand people^ELZR town? (Ciudad Guzman^WP, that is)

We’re thinking of turning it provisionally into a parking lot, hence the above plan, but we’re still looking for an interesting business (other than the obvious answer of starting yet another hotel). Any ideas?

Fuck, I keep thinking and thinking and thinking. And instead of stopping for a moment and writing some of it in this rather forlorn weblog, I keep reading and reading and reading—keep stoking the pyre.

This is getting scary. One of these days either I burn or I firework.

They say that as you grow old you should stop idealizing your parents. Grow out of seeing them as mighty heroes and realize they’re flawed human beings like everyone. And it’s true. And it’s good advice. But it’s a pretty big world out there. And it has its heroes. And there must be at least some of them who have kids. There are.

If I have always within me this silly joy that cares little for justifications. If welded to me is this naive faith in people, in reason, in conversation, in love, in truth—in human possibilities. If I’ve never lacked wonder. If I’m so unfettered I’ve always lived in the future. If I believe in me. If I never look back. If I dare.

It’s because of my parents. I’m thankful. Tonight. Tomorrow.

There was a fire tonight in a warehouse a couple of blocks from the house. Everyone was pretty scared because it was just a stone-throw away but it seems to be contained now. The warehouse, on Mariano Otero Street, turned out to be from the uncle of one of my little sister’s best friends. Weird, that.

Anyway, I went as closed as I dared and took many a picture (until a drunkard started harassing me for taking his picture). Most turned out to be crap—my camera totally sucks at night-pictures—but I gathered the best in this photoset.

And here are two short videos. The first from my very street, the second from Mariano Otero.

It was a very simple idea—a girl and a boy, in the subway—and yet actually drawing it was a nightmare. There are any number of things I would do different for my next webcomic. I guess that means the effort was worth it: much was learned.

So, again, the idea is a girl and a boy in the subway (I used this Flickr photo to “remember” the subway). None of them can muster the courage to speak to each other, none of them can come up with a clever excuse for starting the conversation. Until the girl realizes there’s no bad excuse for meeting someone. And that is her excuse. That’s it.

Reminds me a lot of an elevator sign I scrawled years ago.

I bought them New Year’s Eve at Vallarta^WP and they’re ugly and cliché, I know, but they’re uncannily comfy (almost like a second skin or a squishy crust) and I’m still amazed at how happy some silly Naussica-ish shoes can make me.